Lost in Translation
by castrovalva9
Summary: After "The Trial of a Time Lord", Peri returns home to her mother, with her new husband Yrcanos in tow. You just know this isn't going to go well.


**Title**: Lost in Translation  
**Author**: castrovalva9  
**Rating**: PG  
**Characters**: Peri/Yrcanos, Peri's mother  
**Summary**: After _The Trial of a Time Lord_, Peri returns home to her mother, with her new husband Yrcanos in tow. You just know this isn't going to go well.  
**Notes**: Written for classicdwfic on LiveJournal.  
Beta read by Kara MT.  
Since canon is unclear (and contradictory) about Peri's true fate, I'm going with the events of _Mindwarp_. Therefore, Peri did get married to Yrcanos and the events in _The Reaping_ audio never happened. (If you've ever heard _The Reaping_, you will realise why I have to ignore it.) Also, Peri's passport in _Planet of Fire_ bears a Pasadena address, which is as good a setting as any so I'm using it here. Time period is March 1985.

"Stupid interfering Time Lords," Peri muttered as she stormed down the crowded Pasadena street. Other pedestrians jumped out of her way, and she didn't think their reactions were entirely due to the presence of her warlord husband at her heels.

She thought she had excellent reason to be, at the least, annoyed. After all, she'd just been settling into her new life with Yrcanos when ZAP!, the Time Lords popped up. After providing an extremely detailed (and ultimately incomprehensible) explanation about how she shouldn't be allowed to live so far outside her own timeline, they'd uprooted her and dropped her back in her home country.

They'd also generously plucked Yrcanos up and sent him with her, though she would have been a lot less conspicuous travelling alone; Yrcanos stood out like a sore thumb every place they went. True, he'd relented about keeping two of his piercings, but those concessions were scant comfort to Peri. He remained wrapped in animal skins, a ferret-like head with teeth intact and bared dangling from his right shoulder, and he had flatly refused to remove his three-horned helmet or ceremonial necklace of bone.

And they'd been noticed in many places already. Apparently, being geographically-challenged was a general Time Lord failing rather than a Doctor-specific flaw. In a move that would have done the Doctor proud, this lot had deposited her in New York City rather than anywhere _near_ California.

Speaking of the Doctor, Peri was less than pleased with him too. He hadn't even come to say goodbye to her. So much for friendship! Adding insult to injury, one of the friendlier Time Lords had gossiped to her about the Doctor's new companion. Peri was not happy to learn she'd been replaced so quickly, especially by a woman who reputedly had been able to convince the Doctor to exercise and drink carrot juice, of all things.

Now Peri faced the daunting prospect of explaining her abrupt and prolonged absence to her mother, and of course her stepfather. She had devoted quite a bit of thought to the matter during the long, long Greyhound bus rides towards home and the equally long layovers in varied cities, and had finally decided to try to brazen her way through the initial reunion. Maybe if _she_ acted like her disappearance had been planned, her mother would go along with her. It was a faint, forlorn hope, but it was a hope nonetheless, and Peri desperately clung to it.

"Yrcanos," she began, hoping to fill him in on her sketchy plan so he wouldn't contradict her during the big reunion.

No answer.

"Yrcanos?!" Peri looked around in mounting alarm.

The early-evening sun glared in her eyes for a moment but then she spotted Yrcanos. Fortunately, he wasn't too far behind her. True, he was lagging again, but at least this time he hadn't fallen down an open manhole. Extricating him from the last one had been quite the experience. Instead he merely appeared to have taken an unnatural interest in the sight of a garden gnome on a nearby lawn.

His presence was not going unobserved. Here and there along the street, curtains twitched and ghostlike faces pressed to the windows of residences. Peri doubted that any of the occupants had ever seen anyone quite like Yrcanos before.

"Oh, come _on_," she moaned, walking back to grab his arm and then tug him forward with her yet again. "You think it was easy travelling 2400 miles across the country with you? I'm just lucky my friend Kate accepted my collect call and wired me enough money to pay for our bus tickets. I realise you still don't know what half of that means, but I don't care. Now, you know what? We're almost at my mom's, so behave!"

At the thought of her mother's probable reaction to Yrcanos, Peri repressed a shudder and valiantly attempted to form optimistic thoughts. _She's going to like him. She's going to like him. She's going to... Oh, who am I kidding? She's going to **hate** him._

The fact was, she really couldn't blame her mom when the inevitable reaction occurred. If Peri had met Yrcanos under "ordinary" (read: pre-Doctor) circumstances, she herself never would have seen his finer qualities. At first glance, he was big and loud and outlandish. He hadn't fit in anywhere on Earth so far, and Peri was hard pressed to think of a place on this planet where he might seem "normal". Maybe during Halloween he could blend passably, but they'd overshot even that date by months.

At that unhappy thought, she sighed and looked up. There it was: her mother's house, right on the corner! The paint looked bluer than Peri remembered, and surely those shrubs under the windows were new, but otherwise the sight was vastly comforting in its sheer familiarity. Peri almost cried with relief, except that everything so far had been the _easy_ part.

Determined not to let him be seen too early by the people who really counted, she quickly led Yrcanos to the side of the house and stopped. "I'm going to ring the doorbell. You stay over here for right now."

"Hiding?" Yrcanos demanded.

"Not exactly," Peri hedged.

Yrcanos's face cleared. "Oh. It's an ambush."

"Yeah. Sure. Mom would _love_ one of those. Just stay out of sight for a while, all right?" Without waiting for a reply, and coincidentally without giving herself time to chicken out, Peri strode back to the front door and jabbed the bell.

The door swung open before she was ready. (Though it probably could have opened the following week, and Peri still would not have been prepared.) Janine Foster stood before her. She was a little shorter than Peri, a little darker, and a little thinner. All in all, she looked just about as Peri remembered, which must mean she hadn't exactly been pining away in her daughter's absence, which probably meant she'd barely noticed it and therefore hadn't been particularly bothered by it. Yes, that must be the answer, and a convenient one it was.

To help this glad thought along, Peri pasted a toothy smile on her face. "Hi, Mom, I'm home."

"Peri?" Her mother swayed slightly.

"Yeah, it's me." With a concerted effort, Peri maintained the broad smile.

Her mother's reaction squeezed the expression from her face. A few minutes of sobbing and an extended, extremely tight hug ensued before Peri found herself freed. She took a moment to catch her breath. It was all the time she was given before her mother attacked.

"You _look_ all right. Where have you been all this time?" was the first, not entirely unanticipated, question.

"Travelling, mostly," Peri said honestly."Seeing new worlds. I mean, seeing _a_ new world. This world. Which has many little mini-worlds of its own."

Mrs Foster shook her head. "Howard told me what you did back on Lanzarote, how you wanted to go running off with four strange boys. I never raised you to act that way, did I?"

"It was only _two_ boys!" Peri fired back.

"Aha!" her mother pounced. "Then it's true!"

"Mom, it wasn't like you're obviously thinking," Peri found herself whining, upset that she'd been tricked so easily.

"Then where were you, and what were you really doing? You didn't write, you didn't phone, you didn't visit. Not even a postcard, for months and months!" Mrs Foster's voice rose to a wail. "You missed Christmas!"

"And I'm sorry about that. But I'm perfectly fine and I'm here now, so can we just--"

Her mother's eyes slid past her and focused on a spot behind Peri. "Who is that?"

Peri didn't even need to look. The stricken look on her mother's face said it all. "Um, Mom, maybe you'd better sit down before I tell you any more."

"Who is _that_?" Mrs Foster repeated with increased urgency.

Yrcanos stepped forward, beside Peri, where he halted and thundered, "I am Yrcanos!"

Mrs Foster gaped. Peri winced and felt like disappearing.

Then her mother somewhat recovered from the initial shock and asked the dreaded follow-up question, losing her manners in the heat of the moment. "And why are you here?"

"I'm with Peri. I'm her husband," Yrcanos announced.

Peri cringed. Her mother froze. Yrcanos smiled proudly.

Finally Peri ventured, "So is it okay if we come inside, Mom?"

Stiffly, Mrs Foster shifted just enough to allow them space to enter the house. Peri could tell she was still (understandably) in shock.

Quickly, Peri steered Yrcanos inside the living room and over to the couch, where she pulled him down beside herself. The closer she kept him, the better, she figured. Besides, since together they took up all the room on the couch, her mother would have to sit elsewhere. That could only be a positive thing.

After taking a seat on a spindly wooden chair, Mrs Foster merely gaped at Yrcanos. She could not seem to find the appropriate words with which to address him.

Yrcanos chose to open the conversation. "Peri has been with me," he declared.

"All the time I've been gone," Peri immediately added.

Yrcanos frowned. "No. Before me, she was with the Doctor. But I forgave her for that."

Peri scowled. "There was nothing _to_ forgive."

Mrs Foster, having paled considerably, counted on her fingers, gasped, and snapped at Peri, "You weren't pregnant, were you?"

"Not yet," Yrcanos answered.

"No way!" Peri inserted with appropriate emphasis.

"How many different men have you... _known_ in the past year?" Mrs Foster managed.

"Oh, I can guess what Howard told you." Peri narrowed her eyes. "Speaking of Howard, where is he? I'd love to give him a piece of my mind."

"I can't get in touch with him. He's on a dig in rural Mexico, and they don't have any phones there."

"Try his cell phone," Peri suggested.

"His _what_ phone?" her mother said with a frown.

Peri sighed. "Never mind." She really needed to remember that she was living in 1985 now. With any luck, by the time cell phones became common her mother would have long forgotten Peri's anachronistic mention of them.

Mrs Foster returned to staring at Yrcanos. "What's his name again?" she asked Peri, as if she and her daughter were alone in the room.

"Yrcanos," Peri again told her.

"Yrcanos what?"

"Just Yrcanos. It's one name. You know, like Erimem. Um, _Eminem_," Peri swiftly corrected herself. She definitely had better not mention her ex-girlfriend too often or her mother would catch on and then Peri would never hear the end of things.

"Eminem? Who's that?" Mrs Foster said blankly.

"You"ll find out in about twelve years," Peri muttered. "I mean, Yrcanos is like Cher. Or Madonna."

"He thinks he's too good for a last name. I see."

The insult, Peri was glad to see, flew right over her husband's head, and Mrs Foster moved on.

"Yrcanos," she mused. "That's a Greek name, isn't it?"

Peri shrugged. "Could be." Which wasn't precisely a lie. For all she knew, Yrcanos might actually be a name occasionally given to Greek children.

"How did you two meet?" her mother pressed on, clearly beginning to recover from her initial shock.

"I was a prisoner strapped to a table, about to--" Yrcanos volunteered.

"Ha, ha," Peri interrupted with a poor attempt at a laugh. "Mom, Yrcanos has a strange sense of humour. We actually met on the beach."

"Really." Mrs Foster looked dubiously at Yrcanos, eyeing his animal furs with a grimace. "Do you always dress like that?"

"The airline lost our luggage," Peri lied.

"Oh." Her mother again appeared sceptical, but promptly changed the subject. "So, Mr Yrcanos, what do you do for a living?"

Peri frantically nudged him, but Yrcanos didn't notice the gesture or he pretended not to. Or possibly he took it as encouragement to speak.

He puffed out his chest. "I am a warrior. And a king."

Mrs Foster's face lit up. "A king?"

Peri noticed that she had conveniently chosen to ignore the "warrior" part of the job description and likely was forming extremely inaccurate impressions of Yrcanos's importance. Impressions that must be nipped in the bud. "Look, Mom. Long story short, he's been deposed." _Transplanted to another planet. Same difference_, Peri figured.

"Does he have any money?" Mrs Foster asked with a hopeful lilt to her voice.

"He barely knows what money _is_."

"Then he needs to get a job."

"No high-school diploma. Heck, no formal education at all, I think."

Mrs Foster bit her lip, the light of optimism dying from her eyes. "What skills does he have?"

"Well, he's really, really strong."

"And cunning, vicious, and sly," Yrcanos volunteered.

From the expression on her mother's face, Peri knew she did not consider the latter three qualities to be big selling points. She rushed to do damage control. "Yrcanos is great. Honestly, he is. He's a diamond in the rough. Okay, very rough. And possibly more like cubic zirconia. But still, can't you give him a chance?"

"We'll talk about this later," her mother promised. "In private. Right now, I'm going to go prepare your bedroom for you." On that note, she bolted from the room, her eyes welling up with tears.

"Well," Peri said into the ensuing silence, "I suppose she took the news about as well as could be expected."

Yrcanos grunted and lifted an eyebrow.

"On the other hand," Peri mused, "I find myself having a few problems with this situation. It's March, too late to enrol for second semester. I just missed a whole year of school because some beings called Time Lords were grossly misnamed, plus my mom wants to disown me and I'm married to a warlord. What else can go wrong?"

"It was _your_ decision to come here," Yrcanos pointed out, his tone decidedly verging on annoyed.

"Where else were we supposed to go?" Peri snapped. "I didn't want my mom thinking I was dead. Now she just thinks I'm a slut. Besides, I want to go back to college."

"The wives of warlords need schooling only in the arts of combat and defence. Not in this 'botany', as you call it."

"Well, no one would ever accuse you of being a feminist."

"What is a--"

"Never mind." Peri felt like she'd been saying or thinking "Never mind" far too often recently, with no end in sight.

She and Yrcanos sat in stony silence for several moments until her mother returned. She looked at Peri and Yrcanos as if she suspected--and probably hoped--they were playing a practical joke on her. When she spoke, her voice vibrated with forced cheer. "Come on, Peri, your room's ready."

Peri nodded and stood, Yrcanos moving to follow her.

"Oh, no, mister," Mrs Foster snapped, "it's the couch for you until we get this mess straightened out."

Peri didn't object and soon found herself uncomfortably standing in her old bedroom, trying to remember why coming home had ever seemed like a good idea.

Her mother fixed her with a concerned gaze. "I'm sure you'll be fine in here for tonight. Your old clothes are in the closet and we'll work out anything else you need tomorrow." She paused. "By the way, I'd like to see Yrcanos's passport."

"He doesn't have it. The airline lost it, along with our luggage," Peri wildly invented.

"You're lying, I can tell. Oh, my God, he's an illegal alien, isn't he? You married a man who's going to get deported." Mrs Foster stopped and considered. "However, that may not be such a bad thing, under the circumstances."

"Whatever, Mom," Peri said wearily. "Good night."

She waited until her mother reluctantly left the room, then firmly shut the door and went to sleep. Her dreams were surprisingly pleasant ones wherein various minor misfortunes involving carrot juice befell the Doctor and his new friend.

The following morning, Peri was more than a bit reluctant to leave her room and face the day. It was bound to present new and difficult challenges. Hiding in her room wouldn't solve any of her problems, though, so eventually she emerged and wandered through the house on her way to the kitchen to get breakfast.

The fact that Yrcanos had spent the night downstairs was painfully obvious. The couch sagged crazily, sporting two freshly broken legs. Peri winced and proceeded into the kitchen. The room was Yrcano-free, but her mother was present.

"Good morning, Peri," she chirped.

"Good morning, Mom," Peri answered cautiously, wondering what could possibly have brought about her mother's apparent good mood.

"Well," Mrs Foster briskly went on. "We need to make plans."

Peri stared. Her mother was confident and in control, clearly following a game plan Peri had no knowledge of. It was a dangerous set-up. "Mom? Are you feeling all right?"

"I couldn't sleep last night. Not a wink. I have to admit, first I thought about trying to get your marriage annulled. Then I considered calling Immigration and having your husband deported. But then I decided that no, those options were far too easy. You made your bed, and now you need to lie down in it."

"What do you have in mind?" Peri probed.

"You'll find out." Mrs Foster smiled enigmatically.

"Oh, shit."

"Language, Peri!"

"Sorry, Mom," Peri said automatically. Then she tensed as she heard heavy footsteps approaching, her only warning before Yrcanos entered the kitchen. A streak of blood ran down one of his hands and Peri briefly wondered what he had killed before deciding the subject was better left alone.

"Good morning, Yrcanos," Peri's mother greeted him pleasantly enough. "What would you like for breakfast?"

"The succulent flesh of a freshly slain calf, the sweet milk of its mother, and..." he began.

"Bacon and eggs should be fine," Peri interjected. "No need to make anything special." In the meantime, the whistling teakettle provided a welcome distraction. Peri quickly prepared a mug of instant coffee and placed it in front of her husband. "Here's your coffee, Yrcanos."

"Coffee?" He lifted the cup and took a sip. A second later, a dripping brown stain covered the wall opposite him and the cup was smashed into bits. "What is this poison?" Yrcanos roared.

Mrs Foster cowered. Peri, however, accustomed to Yrcanos's flashes of temper, informed him, "Coffee is a popular drink that is commonly consumed in this part of the world during the morning meal. It's harmless. Well, mostly harmless."

"Ale," he demanded. "I want a tankard of ale!"

"With _breakfast_?" Mrs Foster yelped.

"I'll take care of it," Peri assured her, quickly calculating the likelihood of any wine or a reasonable substitute being present in the house. Come to think of it, she wouldn't mind having a glass or three of the good stuff herself. This day showed classic warning signs of being another rough one.

Wine turned out to be an adequate stand-in for ale, at least in Peri's view. She was on her fourth glass by late afternoon, sprawled across the damaged couch and about to reach for the bottle again, when an echoing crash sounded from outdoors. Since she'd already heard a lot of disturbing noises that day, Peri barely batted an eye as she polished off her latest drink.

Her mother, Yrcanos right behind her, swept into the room, shook her head in disgust, and snatched the wine bottle from Peri's reach. "We have a problem," Mrs Foster stated.

Peri glanced at Yrcanos. He looked innocent, which surely meant he wasn't.

"One cup, one saucer, the sofa, two chairs, the bathroom mirror, an alarm clock, my favourite landscape, the television set, seven trees, five flowerbeds, and one birdfeeder," Mrs Foster rattled off. "Plus the neighbour's pet rabbit," she added darkly.

"Um, what?" Peri said weakly.

"The items in this neighbourhood that have already been demolished by your husband," her mother responded. "Now, no arguments. You two are coming with me."

Confused but cowed, Peri followed her out of the house and down the street, with Yrcanos silently trailing. He'd had more to drink than Peri had, which she guiltily thought might have contributed more than a little to his swathe of destruction. "Mom?" she ventured after they had walked for several minutes and attracted the usual number of stares. "Wouldn't it have been faster to go in the car instead?"

"Not with him aboard," her mother responded with a pointed nod towards Yrcanos. "I shudder to think of how quickly he would have ruined yet another of my possessions."

Peri snapped her mouth shut and vowed not to speak again unless absolutely necessary.

Another ten minutes of walking brought them to the business section of town. Mrs Foster halted in front of a small brown building with dirty windows and turned to face Peri. "One of Howard's friends owns a bar with a restaurant area. He can always use new staff," she announced with a significant look at Yrcanos.

"But what can _he_ do here? He doesn't know how to mix drinks, and I can't imagine him as a busboy... Oh." An idea occurred to Peri and she nodded. "Yeah, that particular job just might suit him."

"I'm glad you think so." With a stiff smile that belied her words, Mrs Foster turned and pushed open the door of the Black Pony. Peri shepherded Yrcanos into the building after her, hoping the fresh air during the walk had sobered him up reasonably well.

It appeared to have done the job. Yrcanos studied his surroundings with some interest whilst Mrs Foster conferred with the bar manager and Peri eavesdropped on the two.

When the conversation ended and the manager approached Yrcanos, Peri stepped in. "Let me explain things to him. It really is best this way." She turned to her husband. "Yrcanos, I want you to listen carefully. You'll be staying in this building tonight, doing what the manager tells you to do. It's called a job. You work and get paid money in exchange. You use the money to buy things you want. Trust me, it's a good thing. You'll make an ideal bouncer."

"What is a bouncer?" Yrcanos said blankly.

"He's foreign," Peri told the frowning manager. "Look, Yrcanos, this job is right up your alley. What I mean is, it's a perfect fit for your skills. You break up fights and maintain the peace and throw out troublemakers. It's like your own little war."

Yrcanos inclined his head in a gracious nod. "It sounds like an acceptable pastime."

"Terrific. Have fun, see you later!" Peri turned to flee.

Her mother blocked her path. "Not so fast, young lady. There's a waitress uniform waiting for you in here."

Peri deflated. Now she knew why her mom had chosen a bar that also served meals. "You're joking, right?"

"I've never been more serious in my life. How else do you think you can afford to pay me rent, and reimburse me for all the damages to the house?"

Peri sighed and resigned herself to at least one horrible night of waiting on tables.

By the end of that dreadful shift, she knew she was looking at a minimum of an additional two months of torment. Somehow, she and Yrcanos had emerged owing money to their employer rather than _being_ owed. Yrcanos was a one-man wrecking crew even when he wasn't particularly making an effort. If only he hadn't broken that last chair, Peri thought mournfully, they might have come out even just a little bit ahead of the game.

She had a feeling it was going to be a long, painful spring in Pasadena.


End file.
